


Symphony in G Major

by Splintered_Star



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Music, Alternate Universe - Orchestra, Big Bang Challenge, Class Issues, F/M, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-01
Updated: 2016-06-01
Packaged: 2018-07-11 13:25:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 22,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7053520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Splintered_Star/pseuds/Splintered_Star
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Les Mis: The Orchestra AU</p>
<p>Javert is the talented, if contentious and strict, concert master of M-sur-M's orchestra. He is dedicated to the purity and perfection of his craft, practicing long hours for whatever piece he has been asked to play. His sole indulgence in life is the work of the brilliant composer Madeline, who publishes for free and anonymously.  Madeline's work is a necessary balm after the chafing frustration of working with the conductor, Jean Valjean.</p>
<p>art by the wonderful  <a href="http://kaleran.deviantart.com/">Kaleran</a></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. ruvido

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文 available: [G大调交响曲](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12766614) by [Chlokers](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chlokers/pseuds/Chlokers), [EleanorYang](https://archiveofourown.org/users/EleanorYang/pseuds/EleanorYang)



> ruvido - musical notation: "roughly" 
> 
> Shout outs:  
> Kaleran, who did wonderful art, gave me on the spot Orchestra Facts, and is ultimately responsible for this fic's existence (the original idea having been sketched out between us while they waiting to perform)  
> Nenya85, who listened to me whine and encouraged me and helped me develop my characterization and themes

Javert set his violin on his shoulder, let out a deep breath, and waited.

Around him, the other orchestra members fumbled to adjust strings or reeds, the noise interspersed with gossip about each other or about the conductor who was yet to arrive. Javert ignored it all, ignored the gossip and the chatter, blocking it all out by running over his part of the first piece they were going to practice. He was already familiar with it – as well as everything else in the rotation – but he refreshed his memory rather than listen to the discordant mess of conversation around him. He didn’t have to listen to them to know they weren’t as valuable as the music in his head.

Footsteps rang out into the hall, the excellent acoustics announcing the conductor’s presence. The steps were uneven, staggered, the rhythm wrong – a limp.  It grated on Javert’s finely tuned ears. The orchestra shuffled around him, lingering clumps of gossipers splitting and settling into their positions. Javert glanced at the other violins lining up next to him out of the corner of his eye, and then focused on the conductor.

“Hello, everyone.” The conductor said from the stand, smiling. There was something stiff in the expression, in the smile that didn’t quite meet his eyes. He was a tall, middle aged man with broad shoulders, the faintest tinge of grey in his curly hair, and thick callouses on his hands. He wore a coat even indoors and a baton was stuck half way out of his jean pocket. He looked unprofessional as always, even for practice, and Javert narrowed his eyes at him.

Some of the younger players called back, “Hello, conductor Jean,” like they were in school. Javert resisted rolling his eyes at them, or at the conductor’s soft laughter. He shifted his violin slightly and then moved it back, just enough to keep his shoulder from locking, and resisted the urge to bury the quiet chatter in Tchaikovsky’s strings. It was improper to ignore the conductor, even if he wasn’t actually conducting at the time.

“Now, I believe we’re supposed to be practicing Vivaldi first tonight,” the conductor – Javert had no intention of calling him Jean – began, shuffling through papers on the stand and pulling out a pencil out of his pocket, nearly dislodging his baton. Javert’s jaw clenched slightly. This wasn’t a performance, but that was no excuse for sloppiness. Valjean looked up, glanced over the orchestra, and pulled his baton out properly. “Let’s start from the top, shall we?”

Javert set his bow to the strings, and watched the other violins shift into position. Some people flipped books open, but Javert had the piece memorized. The fourth chair, a young woman who always arrived late and rarely practiced, held her bow entirely wrong, but Javert had given up on her learning better. Her playing was subpar and if she ruined her wrist doing it, so be it.  The conductor pulled out his baton and waited until everyone was ready.

(This was always the moment Javert remembered, after a playing piece – the moment before the music started, the quiet of anticipation and the silence of an indrawn breath.)

The baton dropped, and Javert played his portion of the piece. As concert master, Javert was the primary player, taking the most complex portion of the violin section. He memorized his part weeks ago, and played flawlessly as always. With the rest of his concentration, he watched Valjean conduct, followed the beat of the baton in the air and the sweep of hands. Conducting, whatever stiffness Valjean held in those broad shoulders dissolved into the music and rhythm and his smile was easier, relaxed and encouraging as he gestured to one section or another.

A few sour notes made Javert grit his teeth and forcefully relax – that blasted fourth violin – but either Valjean didn’t hear them or was ignoring them for now. Their behavior reflected on his own, and he resented it. He closed his eyes for a moment while the cellos took the melody, and then opened them again. This orchestra was not what he wanted to be a part of, these players did not do the music justice – but Javert knew what the music was meant to be, and if hearing that, being able to help /make/ that meant suffering through this pack of amateurs, then he would survive.

The song finished with less of a flourish and more of a slow grind as some of the percussionists dropped their instruments. Javert's lips twisted down, furious that they had ruined the piece, but knew that he had played flawlessly. Still, it was galling to know that a clumsy player could destroy what he had helped create - that these people would disrespect the music they claimed to love, and turn something beautiful into something broken.

Jean Valjean tilted his head, as if still listening to the song. "Ah, well. We'll have to clean up the ending, of course." He smiled kindly. Javert bit his lip. Always with the concessions, never truly fixing the problems. He corrected the percussionists on their flaws, and then turned to the violin section with a considering eye. Javert met his eye, his violin still on his shoulder, because he had played without flaw or blemish and had nothing to fear.

“Violins, could you play the…” Valjean glanced down at his notes, “The forth bar to the sixth, please?”

Javert narrowed his eyes, and then inclined his head. The section was short, and Javert could hear what was odd, now that the violins were playing alone – a slight lag between the first two and the others, the third and fourth violins playing too low. It was subtle, a slight discordancy between notes that even Javert hadn’t consciously noticed while playing. Valjean – whoever he was, completely unknown to Javert’s research, only conducting as a favor to someone – had some skill, even if he directed it in the wrong directions -

“Hm. Javert, I think you’re playing half a key above the rest of the section.”

What?

His fingers tensed on his bow for a moment before he could swallow the outrage down. “I played the piece as written, Maestro.” ‘Correctly’, he did not feel the need to say, even though it pressed at his teeth regardless.  If the rest of the section was unable to play the piece, he would not compromise his own playing to match them.

Valjean nodded, still looking down at his notes. He wouldn’t even meet Javert’s eyes while telling him to adulterate his work…. “That may be true, however,” and now he looked up, and caught Javert’s eyes. Javert inclined his head, almost in challenge. Valjean’s smile cooled and retreated even further from his eyes. “Well, let’s just pretend that was in tune. Why don’t we move to the next piece on the schedule?”

The rest of practice dragged on – minor corrections, adjustments to the pieces. Valjean did not correct Javert again, though his eyes jerked over again and again. Javert met his gaze each time, unflinching and playing as flawlessly as ever. At the end, Javert noticed Valjean trying to get his attention, but walked away without acknowledging it.  This was not the first time they had argued, and it would not be the last.

 

 

Javert set his violin case down on the table as he entered his apartment, flipping it open habitually to check that the violin wasn’t damaged in transit. He kept it in his lap on the bus, and it had never been damaged before, but he always checked as soon as he got home.

He pulled it out and ran his fingers over the strings and the neck. His bow was investigated with a practiced eye. It was about due to be rehaired, but he was saving up for a new bow. It was much harder to find real wooden bows, but using carbon fiber instead…. Well, it would be easier on his budget, but the thought still made him frown.

Regardless, his bow and instrument were not damaged. At least one thing the conductor wasn’t able to ruin – even if the conductor would adulterate the music with his instructions, Javert would be able to know that his instrument and his music was unbroken.

His lip curled again, thinking about it once more. To compromise the integrity of the piece to allow for other people’s failures…. He shook his head. There was nothing to be done for it now, aside from play and become yet more flawless, to be irreproachable by any standard, but he would not be able to practice with this knot of tension in his wrists.

It had been a frustrating rehearsal, and the bus trip home had been a cacophony of conversation and industrial noises. He sat down at his desk, bow in hand and rosin in the other, and turned on his computer. He only ever used it for scheduling, and for this.  

Madeline. No biographical details known. All that was known about the person– and Javert had looked – was that they wrote music and uploaded them on this website, for free, for anyone to use and learn from. A conductor who cared nothing for the money or fame they could make with their music, and instead just wanted the music played. The only money they asked for was for donations to various charities.

Javert had little tolerance for most modern composers, finding them chaotic and overly experimental, caring more about breaking rules than understanding why the rules were in place – tearing traditions down without any sense of building something to replace them. And the people who attempted to get attention through intrigue rather than actual valuable work were insufferable.

But Madeline was – different. Javert almost smiled as he saw that a new composition had been uploaded, applying rosin to his bow habitually. Finally, something good in this long and terrible day. He opened it up and listened to it in his mind as he read.

A sonata, for strings – nothing complex, but there was something striking in its simplicity, something excited and eager. Even when he was young Javert had been too serious, never one for flights of fancy or childish enthusiasm – but looking at this song, listening to it in his head, Javert felt something like an echo of that feeling, of that sense of everything being possible and expectant.

He looked down at his bow, and glanced over to his violin. His wrists weren’t too sore to play another piece, he decided, and there was enough rosin on his bow to play.  He printed out the piece and set it on his music stand, and picked up his violin again. He took a deep breath, set his violin on his shoulder, and let it out again.

It was an indulgence, to play Madeline’s music rather than practice anything on the schedule – but any guilt was buried under the sheer pleasure of the music, in the ability to help create something truly beautiful with his own hands. After a day of incompetent orchestra members and frustrating conductors, he wanted a reminder of what music /could/ be.

He played through the rest of the night, appreciating the elegance of the composition a little more each time through. By the time he had it perfectly memorized, it sounded like the first day of spring in his ears, like the first time he heard Schubert, the first time he was able to produce something /beautiful/ and worthwhile. He let out a breath, clinging to the gold ringing in his ears, and smiled as he set his bow down for the night.

 

 

Valjean sighed down at his desk at the orchestra. Being conductor was a joy, a relief from design work and patents - but there were still challenges.

One of the violins - a young woman, Valjean hadn't caught the name - had been having behavior problems. Showing up late to practices, things like that. Valjean would not fire her at this point, no matter how much Javert complained about her, but obviously the behavior had to be addressed, and speaking to her hadn't seemed to have any effect...

He wrote a warning that he would have delivered to her - it was unpleasant, but he had been trusted with the proper running of this orchestra, and he would not fail in that duty.

Valjean rubbed at his arm, where old prison tattoos laid hidden underneath long sleeves. He had been given a chance against all evidence. He would not waste it.

 

 

Javert let himself into his preferred practice room with a scowl, which only softened slightly when he found it empty. Few people practiced as often as he, even if they desperately should have.

With that thought, his scowl hardened again. That girl at the end of his section had nearly ruined last night’s performance with her playing, and Valjean let her off for it with just a warning. Javert hadn’t even /begun/ to explain to her what she had done wrong, much less how to fix it, when the conductor interfered and dismissed everyone for the night. It’d left Javert seething, all through the trip home and when he reached his apartment his hands had been too tense to practice. Madeline hadn’t uploaded any new compositions, either, and Javert was too frustrated that night to pick out one of the older ones.

Today, however, he picked out some pieces he wanted to work with – things that looked interesting, challenging, relaxing in a way – and carted his violin to the practice rooms to work out some of his frustration. His apartment just didn’t have the right acoustics to really enjoy a piece.

He worked his way through Vivaldi, just to loosen his wrist, just to drop some of the tension out of his shoulders – and then he half smiled, flipped to a different page. Madeline uploaded this composition a few weeks ago, a minuet in G, and as short as it was, Javert liked it a great deal. It was more dramatic than most of much of Madeline’s work, striking and sharp – some of the transitions were challenging, the beat fast enough that Javert still had to focus on it to keep his bow from skipping. It was /enjoyable/, in a way a lot of music wasn’t, and sounded like a chase, tasted like sweat and ozone in his throat, like the lightning and energy –

He finished the piece with a flourish, his bow hardly trembling. He let out a breath and brushed his hair back from where it had fallen loose, a grin growing on his face.  He nearly laughed, dropping his violin from his shoulder and checking over his bow – and then there was a noise behind him, and he froze. He turned, and nearly dropped his bow.

 

 

“I’m very sorry,” Valjean said, holding up his hands. “I didn’t expect anyone to be here today.”

He didn’t expect there to be anyone here, not even Javert, not the morning after a performance – he’d come in to check on the stage after last night, maybe do a few calculations for business in the silence. But he’d been drawn, like a moth or a magnet, to the sound of a violin from one of the practice rooms, and stepped in curiously – and then he’d paused, and leaned against the door to watch.

Javert on stage was compelling, intense, playing as if music were a form of warfare and his bow were a naked blade. Undoubtedly talented, and technically perfect – but watching him, Valjean had always felt a little trapped by his formality and stiffness. Javert performing on stage was recording-perfect – completely correct, and yet hollow in a way Valjean had never quite been able to put his ear to.

Javert practicing, performing for no one but himself, was not.

Vivaldi had sparkled off of his strings, relaxation in his shoulders and animation in his movements. Javert had almost even smiled as he finished the piece and flipped a page on his stand.  Valjean had meant to interrupt then, or sneak out without being noticed – but then Javert had set his bow to his violin again, and begun to play once more, and Valjean had been frozen to the floor.

He had recognized the piece almost instantly, even as his breath skipped like a bad recording – a vicious minuet he’d sketched out weeks ago in a fit of frustration, annoyance at patrons and at Javert’s never-ending criticism of seemingly everyone else in the orchestra.  He’d finished and posted it just to get it out of him – Father Myriel had told him that it helped not to bury the feelings, that to acknowledge emotions in music helped to process and move on from them. He hadn’t imagined anyone would want to play it, or that there could ever be beauty in such a piece.

Javert had taken his ugly emotions, his annoyance and anger, and with sweeps of his bow carved something glorious out of them, something harsh and stark and elemental, untamed – the glory of a thunderstorm, the crack of lightning or a pounding heartbeat – and Javert had stood in the center of it, conjuring power and energy with a grin.

And then the piece had finished, and Javert had relaxed – and then Valjean had let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding, just loud enough for Javert to notice and turn in surprise.

“Maestro.” Javert ground out, setting his violin down. His smile was gone – all of the relaxation in his form disappeared, his shoulders tightening like a pulled string. Valjean ached to watch it, all of the animation and wild joy disappearing under a slammed gate.

“I am very sorry for interrupting your practice, Javert.” And he was, suddenly deeply aware that he had seen something precious and private, something that had not been offered to him. Still a thief, he thought, even after all this time. “I didn’t expect anyone to be in today at all, and when I heard something I didn’t think was on the schedule, I was curious.”

“/I/ am fully capable of playing everything on the schedule, Maestro.” Of course Javert would assume it as a criticism, of course Javert would be able to insinuate that everyone else in the orchestra was incompetent. But Valjean only felt a shadow of his normal irritation. It was impossible to hate Javert after what he had just watched, after he had seen flashes of the soul Javert normally kept hidden.

“Of course, you always are,” Valjean said, because there was no doubt of that. As frustrating as the man could be to work with, he had never once faltered in a performance and apparently memorized pieces before rehearsal. Javert seemed somewhat mollified by the compliment, though Valjean thought there was still a streak of embarrassment in him. “Your playing is always excellent. I should have expected you would be practicing.”

Somehow, this only makes Javert stiffen more, checking over his bow. If Valjean didn’t know better, he would call the movement defensive.

“This is not – practicing, Maestro. Not as such.” Valjean blinked, gestured for Javert to continue. Javert rolled his shoulders and then set his instrument on a nearby piano bench. The violin was old, and well cared for. “This is not for performance. It is – an indulgence.”

Valjean forced himself not to blink. Surely Javert meant – “Well, Vivaldi can be very enjoyable to play, I’m sure.” Perhaps revealing how long he had been listening was the wrong choice, but that was better than thinking about what it could possibly mean for Javert to call Madeline’s work “an indulgence”.

Javert waved his free hand in dismissal. “Vivaldi was a warm up. No, I meant – did you not recognize it? It is a recent work, by a man who publishes under the name Madeline. He produces – interesting work.” Valjean swallowed, and hoped that Javert didn’t notice. “Have you heard of him?” 

“I – have,” Valjean said, hoping that he wasn’t flushing terribly. He has heard a lot of reactions to his work as Madeline, but – from Javert, of all people… “I didn’t realize you followed modern composers.” Javert had a habit of calling anything published after 1950 meaningless noise at best. One of the other violins – Fantine, he thinks, the young woman – once baited him into an impressive rant by asking him his opinion on John Cage.

Javert inclined his head in acknowledgement. “Most of them, I do not.” Javert glanced over his bow once more, and then tugged some rosin out of his front pocket, applying it to the bow in easy, thoughtless movements of long practice. “They break rules simply for the sake of breaking them, as if the structures and traditions exist for no reason. They destroy what has come before them without respect, without acknowledgement; and worse, they offer nothing worthwhile to replace it.” He scowled, though that was so normal an expression on him that was almost not worth mentioning. “They discard something of value and replace it with… noise and nonsense.”

Javert gestured with his bow, almost like Valjean found himself doing with his conductor’s baton sometimes, and continued, “Madeline, however…. They are not chaotic, undirected as the others. There is a complex logic to their work, an elegance to it. They take the forms of the past and use them, recombine them, creating something beautiful and new and /worthwhile/ without running roughshod over what has come before. It is - magnificent.”

Valjean stared, silent. Listening to Javert play, seeing a glimpse of the passion and emotion he normally hid – that had been arresting enough, like a soprano’s pure high C or the swelling of a symphony. But seeing that passion in him and knowing, without any possibility of doubt, that it was his work that caused it; that all that intensity and admiration was directed at /him/ - it was potent, enough to be alarming, alcohol on an empty stomach or climbing a tree with a grip he wasn’t sure he would hold -

Javert fell quiet and a faint flush crawled up his neck. He crossed his arms with his bow in one hand and looked away – and that was enough for Valjean to remember that it wasn’t directed at him, not truly. All of that passion was for a mysterious composer without a face, for a man that didn’t actually exist.

That was enough of a reminder – the harsh landing after his grip gave way – for Valjean to smile blandly, folding everything back under cool, benign professionalism.

“If there’s something in particular you would like to play, feel free to make a suggestion and we’ll see if we can work it into the schedule.” Javert looked back, and once more he was performance-perfect, stiffness and poise, all of his passion behind a locked gate. Valjean’s heart hurt still, but he was no longer sure if it was for Javert’s sake alone. Javert nodded, sharply, and Valjean turned to leave. “I’ll leave you to your playing, then.”

Valjean walked from the practice room and then from the orchestra house, all possibility of doing business work here lost. Instead he went to the empty apartment that he was never quite able to make feel like anything other than a well-used hotel room. He tried to work on what he had originally planned on doing, but he was stuck, looping around the image of Javert smiling like a wolf and conjuring a storm with his bow.

It wasn’t Javert’s fault, of course. He couldn’t have known that the composer he enjoyed so much was the same man who had watched him in secret, stealing the knowledge of a side of him that Javert, intensely private, never showed to others. Perhaps he would have been willing to show Madeline, but never Valjean.

Valjean could not tell him. Better for Madeline to remain illusionary, so that the passion and vibrancy of Javert performing would not be tarnished with the knowledge of the real man. Valjean had no right to be warmed by Javert’s admiration of Madeline, and yet, the image of Javert’s wild joy was lodged in his heart and would not leave.

Without thinking, he grabbed a notebook of music staves. He wasn’t making any progress on work, anyway, not with his guilt and the memory of that moment of breathless surprise in his mind.

That night, he wrote a violin solo in G. He thought of Javert, the animation in his movements and the power of his emotion, the sensation of being in the middle of a storm or caught in a wild case, all energy and enthusiasm and reckless abandon – and then he wrote something sharp-edged and sparkling and fiercely aggressive. Only the best players would be able to do it justice.

It wasn’t a proper apology, and couldn’t be without acknowledging what he couldn’t, but Valjean titled it “wolftongue - for J” and posted it, regardless.

 

 

That flash of bare arms, black ink quickly hidden once more, lingered in the back of Javert's mind even as he practiced in his apartment.

He had thought, briefly, foolishly, that Valjean had understood him when he played that day - he'd seen Valjean's face in response to Madeline's music, the way Valjean had looked at him then. Javert had felt, for once, at peace with Valjean - for that brief period, they were harmonic and not discordant.

It had lasted, strange and haunting, like the last note of a song still vibrating in the air, until the next rehearsal and they had argued over Schubert's concerto and the playing of that girl who kept ruining Javert's section with her lax playing and unprofessional behavior. She had been warned, because Valjean insisted on doing things gently, as if there was any value in keeping her in the orchestra at all. There were many talented players waiting for an opening so they could play - Javert remembered being one, vividly, every time they held an audition - and that girl was a broken string, overdue to be replaced.

And Valjean had turned away, running his hands through his hair - and the movement had stretched his shirt sleeves, his collar, exposing just enough skin to see flashes of black ink, half faded on his arms and the top of his spine.

It had been a long time since Javert had seen tattoos like that, but some memories didn't fade as easily as ink did. He snorted, pausing a particularly boring section of Wagner to reapply rosin to his bow. His father claimed to get a new band on his arm every time he was in jail, but in truth he got one every time he got piss-drunk enough to think it was a good idea. The messy black heart on his mother's shoulder, on the other hand, she did get in prison. Javert remembered seeing it for the first time when he was dragged into a family visit by his guardian.

Half-faded tattoos he always kept covered, a rough accent he didn't bother hiding as much as Javert hid his own, a history he refused to speak of. Javert didn't have proof, of course. But he had good instincts, and there were ways to verify these things.

And if it were verifiable, then? The patrons would - or should - have done a background check, and Valjean had won the favor of most of the orchestra with his lax judging and tendency to keep spare strings handy free for anyone who wanted one. (And that was another tug on his instincts! Winning favor with money rather than skill, even though he had a measure of talent.)

No, Javert thought, finally finishing the piece. There was nothing that such an accusation would mean now. No one would listen to him, and Javert has fought with enough conductors to know that such a thing would damage his own career. (Was it possible for a man bearing the marks of a prison term to have changed his ways? No, it could not be. A broken string could not be repaired and made whole again.)

 

 

The last performance of the season was rapidly approaching. Javert had memorized all of the pieces long ago, obviously, but a single flawed player could ruin a performance. If Valjean would not deal with this section properly, then Javert would do it for him. Grudgingly, resenting every time he found it necessary to correct one of the violins on their posture or playing, but Javert would do it. It would be worth it, if they were able to produce something valuable.

He narrowed his eyes at the empty chair in his section. Fantine, her name was - the bane of his section, always late to rehearsal and often making mistakes. Her playing seemed to be getting worse, somehow, as time went on. Valjean was too indulgent.  

Javert looked up at the clattering that announced Fatine's arrival. He glanced over her, frowning at the shadow of a bruise in her elbow under the edge of her sleeve. She smiled faintly at the rest of the section, receiving few smiles in return, and fumbled to get her violin ready to play. Javert's frown deepened at her careless handling of the expensive instrument. His own violin had cost him a year's worth of pay, and would have cost more if not for a patron who was fond of his playing. It was the most valuable thing he owned. Hers was almost as valuable, and she treated it as if it was worth nothing.

His lip curled. She held her instrument with no respect for it or what it could do. It was more valuable than she was.

"Now that we are all here," he said pointedly, picking up his bow and adjusting his violin on his shoulder. "Shall we?"

He could hear the distinctive step of Valjean's limp - discordant, out of time, grating - as the conductor approached but ignored it as he led his section in a simple warm up. Valjean might tolerate lax behavior, but Javert would not.

 

 

Valjean adjusted his tie and resisted the urge to muss his hair. Even now, with over a year's worth of conducting behind him and even longer in business meetings - even now, with the name Jean Valjean not a brand of ignominy on his shoulders, thanks to a gift he would never be able to repay - the suits and posture of a respectable man still felt like a falsehood. He was able to forget it, on stage, lose himself in the music and ignore the sensation that he was wearing another man's life.

But in the hour before a performance, ignoring it was impossible. He scanned over the schedule again, and then over the assembled performers going through their warm up. Javert stalked through the violins like a guard on patrol, his violin on his shoulder and a scowl on his face. It was a personage so different from the one Valjean had seen months ago in that practice room, Valjean had trouble reconciling the two at times. But then again, Valjean was the last man with any right to judge another for keeping the truth of himself private.

Sometimes, the ink on his neck burned. Sometimes, he looked at Madeline's page and thought about deleting it. His work would never be accepted under the name Jean Valjean - he was too poor, too self-taught, too visibly an ex-con to ever be accepted in the establishment. But if Madeline brought joy to Javert's life, inspired passion in the heart of a man so restrained and austere - well, Valjean could tolerate the name Madeline, for that.

"Maestro," someone called from the strings section - one of the violins, a talented fourth chair who could easily move up in the section if he'd stopped being quite so terrified of Javert. "Do you have a D string? Mine's snapped and I don't have a spare."

Ah, excellent, a distraction. "Yes, of course," He called back, ignoring Javert's rolled eyes. Valjean rooted around in his desk until he found a suitable string, and carried it over to the violin section with a smile. Much better to help his orchestra prepare than fret over his own inadequacies.

 

 

Javert scowled at the fourth chair who'd managed to forget a spare string on performance night. Either that or, like some of the others, he'd come to rely on Valjean always having spare strings and felt no need to provide for himself. Leeches. Charity just encouraged them.

He turned away from the conductor's indulgence, and scanned over his section again. He did not have the expertise to manage the entire orchestra, but what he could do, he would. Tonight, they would be playing one of his favorite symphonies, and he would not have it ruined by sloppy performers.

A twang of a string, a dropped bow barely caught - Javert narrowed his eyes at the noise. Ah yes. Fantine. She looked up at him, glaring back as if she had any right to object to the treatment. As if she had any right to be here, in this hall - even this hall, motley and underfunded as it was, was a symbol of the greater whole of music, and deserved the same respect as Carnegie Hall.

He looked at her pallid features and thinning hair, at the shadow of bruises in her veins, and scowled. His mother had been convicted for drugs at least twice, the second time because Javert had recognized the signs of abuse in her fortune-telling 'clients' and called the police.

He'd gotten a compliment from the arresting officer for his honesty and his good eye, and asked if he had any plans to join. He'd thought about it, but by then he'd found his first violin and begun to play.

"And are you prepared to perform, madam?"

Fantine crossed her arms. They were thin, the veins dark and bruised. "Of course I am." Javert raised his eyebrows at her. He'd heard what she called practicing the week before - much too sloppy, and she continued to be unwilling to put in the time necessary to master the pieces. And her posture was still appalling. She snarled, her grip too tight on her bow.

"I may not have final say over who is in my section, girl, but there are some behaviors I will not tolerate" Javert began, intending to give her a final warning on her appalling behavior, but then the girl was on her feet, her bow clattering on the floor as she grabbed Javert's lapels.

"Look, you self-righteous /ass/," she growled, her face flushing and her grip weak, "Just because you don't have anything better to do but insult me-"

Javert stared down at her, the shadows under her eyes and the trembling in her grip, and felt nothing but disdain. He deliberately unpeeled her hand from his lapels and let it drop. Her shoulders were shaking, and she looked moments away from fainting. Withdrawal, most likely.

"What's going on here? Fantine, are you all right?" Valjean, of course. The conductor gently pulled Fantine backwards, as if she were something worth protecting, while completely ignoring the violin bow she stepped on in the process.

Fantine tried to shake off his hand, but Javert had witnessed Valjean lift a piano with little assistance, and a half-dead wretch had no chance of escaping his grip.

"Nothing you need to concern yourself with, /Maestro/." Javert would almost be impressed with the depth of disdain dripping from her voice, if it were not entirely inappropriate to address her conductor to his face that way.

Javert scowled deeper as her movement jarred her abandoned bow, warping the wood beyond repair. As if there were any doubt of her unworthiness and her inability to play, she carelessly destroyed her own bow. If he hadn't already wanted throw her out of the orchestra....

He knelt, picking up the broken bow and looking it over. His lips twisted into a snarl. "I was inquiring if she would be capable of performing tonight. Unfortunately," He held the bow up for emphasis, "Since she has just broken her bow, it appears I have gotten my answer." His snarl shifted to something closer to a smile, though it still had too many teeth. "Unless, Maestro, you happen to have a spare performance grade violin bow on hand?”

So generous, this ex-convict conductor. Javert had heard he got all of his money in patents and inventions, Javert had never believed that. It was unlikely enough for an ex-con to be marginally skilled at conducting, and Javert had been forced to admit the truth of Valjean’s skill – but for him to be a brilliant inventor as well was too much.

Javert had fought his way to his position, decrying all temptation to crime or failure, earned it with his purity and effort. A man who had fallen into crime had proven himself incapable of what was necessary. A broken string could not be repaired.

How had he gotten his money, then? Javert had his suspicions. Suspicions, but no proof. He narrowed his eyes at the needle marks on Fantine’s arms and the gentle way Valjean held her shoulders, and snarled once more.

Valjean attempted to guide Fantine to a chair, but she remained standing though she shook with the effort. Javert resisted the urge to brush his hair out of his eyes. The sooner they got this leech out of his section, the sooner they could prepare for the performance /properly/. Valjean looked over, and for the first time, Javert saw a spark of irritation in him.

“Javert, this is unnecessary.” Valjean stepped between them, as if the drug-addled woman deserved defending, as if either of them had /any/ right to be in this place. “Please, step back and give her some space.”

A plucked string, the fall of a hammer – Javert snarled, barely keeping himself from damaging the bow in his hand even more than it already was. “Why, so you can coddle the junkie? Maybe if you give her a free shot she’ll be able to make it through the performance.” Valjean stared at him, skin blanching. Javert smiled with far too many teeth, a wolf on the hunt. “I suppose it’s a little more lucrative business than /theft/.”

Valjean swallowed once, twice – opened his mouth and then closed it again. He stood for a long moment, his strong shoulders limp. He did not respond with anger, as many of his lot would, or even fervently deny it. Perhaps there was no way to deny it. Instead he closed his eyes for a moment, took a deep breath.

“I understand that you’re angry, Javert.” He said, evenly – but his voice wavered very faintly, a struck string no matter how the player tried to still it. “However, Fantine is very ill. I am going to take her to the hospital, and I will return for the performance.” He glanced over the staring performers. “I – apologize for the disruption.”

Javert crossed his arms, broken bow in one hand, and watched the man walk away.

 

 


	2. intermezzo

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> intermezzo: intermission

Jean Valjean sat at the hospital bedside in silence. Normally couldn’t sit still without tapping out a rhythm on anything nearby, sketching out the shape of new pieces in the unconscious movements of fingers against his thigh. But now he was still, the notes in playing in the bottom of his mind gone still and quiet – right now, his hands were curled into loose fists on the arms of the chair and his spine was limp like a snapped string.

Fantine lay on the bed, a study in pale skin and bruises. An IV line ran into her arm, and bruises on her shoulders. She managed a weak smile and reached for his hand – he grabbed it half way across the space between the bed and the chair. Her hand was calloused from her bow, but her grip was much too weak for a musician.

“I am sorry, Maestro,” she said, and then paused to cough, “for ruining the performance last night. You have only ever been kind to me, and I-”

“No, no, Fantine.” Valjean held her hand as gently as he could. His hands had never felt so clumsy and so rough. “We were able to perform. Perhaps not at our best, but we were able to go through with the show.” He had to chuckle, a bit chagrined. “Javert is quite cross, but,”

Fantine interrupted him with laughter, hoarse and hollow, barely a shadow of amusement. “Javert is always cross, Maestro. With me gone, he will have to find someone else to complain about.”

Valjean blinked, his grip faltering. He – knew, of course, he’d heard the doctor’s report, as aware as anyone what ward he was sitting in. But his heart ached to hear her speak of her own impending death so casually, something lodged in his throat. All he could do was clutch her hand as gently as he could in both of his, bending his head and whispering a prayer into the fragile bones.

He raised his head, letting out a breath. No prayer he knew seemed to be enough. He opened his mouth, wanting to reassure her somehow, but her expression – weary, and somehow sarcastic – made him close it again with a soft laugh. No, no prayers were enough. No human language would be, but Valjean felt compelled to try, with awkward, clumsy words that never came as easily as music had.

But he was not Madeline, and music could not help him here.

“I – your medical stay has been paid for, of course.” Fantine blinked at him, as if that were a surprise, as if Valjean would have been able to do anything else. "Are there any family members you need to contact?"

Fantine blinked again, and laughed again, laughed until she coughed and Valjean reached for her in alarm. She waved him away with her free hand, still chuckling hoarsely. Her laughter should have made her look younger, healthier. It did not.

"No, no family." She shook her head, her limp hair barely moving. "Just -" She stopped, looking away. "No, never mind."

"Please, if there's anything I can do for you, just say so." He looked down once more to the fragile bones in his hand, but didn't truly see them. That one of his musicians had become so ill without his notice, and perhaps he had made it worse with his callous actions... "If I had known how ill you were, I would have given you time off, or -"

Fantine jerked her hand out of his, scowling at him. "I could not /take/ time off, Maestro. Insurance barely covered the treatment I was getting," she gestured to the marks chemotherapy had left on her arms, mistaken by Javert as track marks. "Not everyone has money to spare, Monsieur." Once more, his throat closed with guilt. No matter what he tried, he could not ease anyone's suffering.

Silence for a long moment. Her hand clenched in the bedspread, and then she narrowed her eyes at him. "...When you say anything, Maestro."

"I mean it." He laid his hand next to hers but did not touch.

Her eyes flickered to his shirt pocket, making him aware of the rosary tucked there, and then back to his face.

"...I have a child," She said, suddenly, throwing the words out like a challenge, like a snapped string. "A daughter. She'll be six, soon." Valjean found himself glancing at Fantine's left hand, conspicuously bare of jewelry. Then he looked back at her sardonic smile and chastised himself for the uncharitable instinct. She waited for a moment, her hands tense, and then she let out a breath. "...her father's a scoundrel, never gave me his real name, much less get any child support." She brushed limp bangs out of her eyes, her expression darkening further. "She's been staying with - well, they said they would watch her. Any money I get goes to them. For her care, they say."

Her voice dripped with suspicion, and Valjean's heart ached. "I -," he began, and then stopped, swallowing. He did not know what to offer her. Nothing seemed to be sufficient.

Fantine looked away, facing the wall. "I have few possessions and no one I care for but her. She has no guardian but those people, and once I am unable to pay for her care..." She let out a breath and stared at him. "You say you will do anything. All I want is my daughter taken care of. Sell the violin, say she's yours, whatever. Just - take care of my daughter."

Valjean felt the touch of God on his shoulders, as if Father Myriel was smiling at him, and he didn't even think to hesitate. He touched her hand, and smiled.

"Of course."

 

 

Javert frowned, his fingers stiff and his posture all wrong. He forced himself to stretch out his fingers, relax his shoulders. He flipped his page to Madeline's latest work, but it came out flat, stiff, harsh and discordant. The flaw was not in the work, he knew, he could /see/ the quality of the music - no, the flaw was in himself. It always was.

He was a broken instrument, barely able to be tuned - he had always been broken, but he had known where he flaws were, known his own snapped strings and been able to play around them.

Until now. Until now. He growled, anger tangling his nerves - at himself, at that drug addled wretch, at /Valjean/ -

-While Valjean had been gone, 'taking Fantine to the Hospital' - Javert had been snarled up in his rage, broken bow held too tightly, until that same string inside of his mind snapped again, only knowing that this could not stand -

He'd kept a notebook in his violin case - he'd pulled it out then, writing in the steady hand he'd practiced for hours on as a child: "Dear Monsieurs, I have recently become aware of certain circumstances that you may find important..."

Everything he knew about Valjean, everything he inferred, suspected or could insinuate - it was a fit of temper, ugly emotion, what felt like /justice/ when he shoved the letter into the patrons' office but now, the next day, felt more like petty vengeance.

He didn't have proof of any wrong doing. He still didn't. He knew, like his chords and the nature of his instrument, but he didn’t have /proof/.  If he hadn't been so violently angry, he wouldn't have written it. He’d let his emotions get the better of him, and it had compromised his judgement. There was no way the directors were unaware of Valjean’s criminal past, and if they had chosen to ignore it, it was not his place to remind them of it.  It was improper of him, to insinuate such things about his conductor.

Javert scowled down at his hands, which had betrayed him that night and betrayed him now. His emotions warped him– he was an instrument constructed from bad wood, and he was not allowed the same liberties as those of stronger stock. He could not afford them. In his rush of rage that night, he had forgotten that.

He would speak to the patrons in the morning, explain to them what he had done. If they considered his behavior inappropriate and unfitting a Concert Master…. He would accept that.

Until then – he adjusted his stance, breathed out once, and adjusted his grip – he would practice until he was worthy of his instrument.

 

 

“Hello, little one.” Valjean said, as gently as he could manage. If the girl was terrified of him it would make the legality much more difficult, but the child looked up at him with wide blue eyes and smiled. “My name is Valjean. Are you Cosette?” The child nodded, slow and hesitant, glancing around. Her caretakers - the most polite word Valjean could use at this point – were in another room, arguing loudly with Valjean’s lawyer. Valjean was determined to spend as little time with them as possible.

He knelt down, and smiled at her. She smiled back, and it trilled in Valjean’s heart like birdsong. She was bright and fragile and something was fluttering in his chest, something starting to grow like the first notes in a song or a new sprout, and he offered his hand.

“I’m – I know your mother. She wants to see you. Would you like to come and see her?”

Cosette blinked, her big blue eyes too wide, and then nodded again. Her smile grew wider and she grabbed his hand, but then shrunk away from him when she heard shouting from the next room.

“I – I haven’t finished my chores, monsieur.” She looked so /apologetic/, wilting like a parched plant, and whatever strange growing thing that was tangling around Valjean’s breastbone clenched. “I must finish, or else Madam will be angry with me, and…”

“it’s all right, child.” Valjean held her tiny hand in both of his, as gently as he could. She was so small, so fragile. Surely children were supposed to be bigger by that age? His memories of his sister’s children were vague. “I’ll deal with her. You can come see your mother, if you like.”

The child looked at him, too wary for how young she was. “…And then I’ll finish my chores?”

Oh, this precious girl would never come back to this place if Valjean had any say in it. His lawyer despaired at arranging everything, but agreed with him on the need for it.

“We’ll see about that later. For now, let’s go see your mother.”

Cosette frowned for a moment, and then nodded with a wide smile. Valjean stood and led her out of the beaten down house while his lawyer distracted her caretakers. His lawyer might never forgive him for it, but Valjean thought she would understand.

 

 

Sitting at Fantine’s bedside, Cosette asleep on the bed next to her, Valjean sighed down at his notebook. He’d gone into the orchestra the other day, to explain his absences and lack of availability, only to have been sat down by the director and told, very politely and coolly, that concerns had been raised about his life outside of the orchestra.

It was not, the man had said – Valjean had worked with him for years, even before the man had asked him to conduct – that anyone involved in the orchestra /believed/ that he was still a thief, or a drug dealer, or unduly involved with any of his players. Of course not, he had said, while deliberately not looking at where Valjean’s prison tattoos lay hidden under his sleeves. But it was vital for the orchestra to maintain a spotless reputation in these days of lowered interest. The patrons were concerned.

Valjean had smiled, and said that he understood, and collected any belongings he cared to keep from the orchestra. He never kept much there, anyway, aside from spare strings from the string players. He left those there, anyway. There was violin coming from one of the practice rooms, a section of Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet. Valjean had walked past without stopping.

Now, sitting here with a half-dead woman and a half-starved child, Valjean stared down at his music notebook and sighed. Father Myriel had encouraged him to turn his emotions into music, but there was no music in him now. He knew who had raised concerns, who had insinuated that he was only helping Fantine for illicit or immoral reasons. The timing, the nature of the accusations – yes, there was no doubt about who had raised questions about his suitability.

And yet, Valjean felt no hatred in his heart for Javert. Just grief, the bittersweet memory of Javert almost smiling as he talked about Madeline, and the knowledge that no, Valjean could never be the man Javert would want him to be. The flickers of joy that Valjean had seen were for a man that did not exist.

Every time Valjean tried to write anything, every time he thought about how long it had been since he’d posted a new composition, his thoughts caught on Javert snarling at him, the rage in those grey eyes, and the music died at his fingertips.

He sighed, not loudly enough to disturb the sleeping child nearby or attract Fantine’s attention. She was tired most of the time, now, but had retained enough energy to talk with Cosette and sometimes with Valjean. Fantine was passionate and sharply sarcastic when she thought Cosette couldn’t hear, but was willing to talk with Valjean about music and what she wanted for Cosette. She was also fully wiling and able to argue with lawyers and social workers for as long as it took. If she died – when she died – she named Valjean as Cosette’s guardian. It was not an adoption – Valjean had no interest in navigating that particular mess, yet – but it would ensure she was taken care of.

Soon – within a few months, the doctors said – Valjean would be raising a child alone.

He quirked a tired smile. Perhaps he should thank Javert, even. Valjean was able to balance business and conducting, but he would not be able to do both with Cosette in his life. Having more time would only be a benefit. 

But still. Madeline could not just disappear. There were people who sent him messages of admiration, or concern whenever he went too long without posting. He should let them know. He – didn’t understand, quite, but it seemed polite. So instead of sketching out a sonata like he had wanted to, he set his pencil to paper and wrote instead, “I am very sorry, everyone who enjoys my work…”

 

 

“….I do not know if it will be permanent, but due to circumstances in my life, I will be not be releasing music for some time. Thank you, everyone, for your support, and god bless you.”

Javert stared at the webpage in quiet dismay.

He was – surprised, almost, at the intensity of his reaction. It was unreasonable, he knew, to feel betrayed or even upset. Madeline was not his in any way, not his client or his patron or even his acquaintance. He did not, in truth, know who Madeline was at all. It had never seemed to matter - Madeline had seemed a font of music, a manifestation of art itself rather than anything so crass and inelegant as flesh.

The thought was strange, that Madeline – of elegance and charm, sweeping concertos and subtle symphonies – had a life outside of music, might find something more important than music. Unsettling, almost, like playing in a section with one instrument out of tune.

 

 

Fantine died, between one note and the next – her coughing rattled her chest and then stopped.

Cosette – precious child, still too thin and too skittish, who made Valjean feel like he’d made a flower bloom every time she smiled – looked up from her coloring book. She inched towards her mother, and then Valjean saw the moment she realized that Fantine was not going to wake up again.

He did not chastise her for her tears. Instead, he lifted her into his lap and helped her pray for her mother’s soul.

 

 

For a while, Valjean did not write anything. He was busy – with his business, now based in Paris; with his charge, who he could not call his daughter even as she called him “Papa” – and he barely missed it.

In truth, he was grieving – he had enjoyed conducting, had enjoyed working with an orchestra, had even enjoyed corralling Javert into working with his section. But the thought of Javert was still sour, and tangled into every thought of composing – so his website stayed dormant, and his piano grew dusty. Perhaps music need not be a part of his life any longer. Perhaps it had always ever been an indulgence.

 

 

And then, and then. Cosette grew, beautiful and eager and so clever – she poked curiously at her mother’s violin and asked if she could play –

And Valjean could not deny her that, but set her on his lap at his piano, first. Taught her scales, and helped her move her hands, listening to her giggle as she they stomped through simple songs together – soon he found himself tapping out rhythms again, humming under his breath –

He looked at the girl smiling, so proud as she hammered through a song – but he hadn’t gotten any new song books yet, she needed something new to play – so he settled next to her, and played a few notes while she followed it – and then while she dozed against his shoulder, he kept playing, chasing the melody a little further and -

Oh. Well.

He chuckled over his piano, and dug out a notebook from underneath a potted plant. He hadn’t written anything down in ages – hadn’t wanted to, his mind like a sore muscle whenever he tried – but this was something he wanted to remember.

Maybe he would post it.  Maybe he wouldn’t – there was an appeal in keeping this in his heart, treasured like the precious thing it was, tucked next to Cosette’s smile and the Bishop's blessings. Then again, if it would not cost him anything to share it, if he could make someone else’s world brighter, then was he not obligated to?

He looked down at girl sleeping on his side, and smiled. He was keeping the truly precious thing, regardless.

 

 

“Thank you, everyone, who has continued to enjoy my work in my absence,” the note read as Javert looked it over once more, “I appreciate all of your messages of support. I do not know if I will produce at the same rate as before – my life has changed significantly since you have seen me last – but I am here now. I will go forward with God, and I will pray for you as you all have prayed for me.”

Javert stared at the screen. He'd hardly believed it when he'd gotten the email alert, even though there was no reason to doubt it. Perhaps it was a scam, someone having taken over Madeline's site in order to misdirect the money the man collected for charity... Javert had heard rumors of something like that.

(Javert distrusted technology on principle - if it were possible to do something in person, he did so. But Madeline only released online, and Javert had grown tired of going to libraries to access the music. He was more comfortable, doing such things in private, and so the laptop.)

There was a new file uploaded - the right size to be a new composition. Javert opened it without hesitation; it was the only verification that mattered. Anyone could claim the website, but the music could not be reproduced. He would know Madeline's work in an instant.

At first, Javert's eyes stuttered over the music in confusion. Titled just "For C," it was - simple, more so than he'd expected, no longer than a few minutes long at the written length. Childish, almost, and for a moment Javert was offended for Madeline's sake, angry at whoever tried to imitate with such simple works - but then, but then. He looked again, and the melody unfurled in his mind- simple and light, yes, but elegant, clean lines and efficiency. It was abstraction, but purposeful, implying rather than stating; stars forming constellations on the black velvet of his mind.

Yes, he thought with relief, with satisfaction: this was Madeline.

Suddenly, the thought of drudgery and replaying the same concertos for unappreciative audiences was not so oppressive, and Javert smiled.

 

 

Cosette grew, in fits and spurts like all children – Valjean would blink and suddenly she was taller, reaching to his waist, and then higher. Her smile did not change, but only grew brighter – she remained curious and eager to learn, always cheerful and clever.

Soon, sooner than he had expected, she was picking up her mother’s precious violin with careful hands. Valjean's heart clenched with something that was both sweeter and harder to swallow than pride and joy - something in the way she held the instrument, respectful and careful like he'd taught her to be with musical instruments, something in her posture and her smile, hit him like a high C note at the end of an aria, lingering and beautiful and making his throat clench.

All too suddenly, Cosette's eager smile started to fade. Rarely, precious rarely, she grew skittish and worried. "Papa, should I not have...?" She looked down at the instrument. "I just - you'd said that it was Mama's, and I think I'd like to play strings rather than the piano, and we don't have any others around the house..."

Valjean smiled, carefully taking the violin from her hands. "Of course you can try strings, dear." He reassured her. "Just, this one is a little bit big for you at the moment, I think?" He made a show of measuring it against her arm - indeed, she wouldn't be able to hold it properly. "This weekend, we'll try out a few smaller instruments, and save this one for when you're older." Cosette brightened again, her smile excited. So easily pleased, his little lark. "Are you sure you want to play violin?"

"Yes, Papa, I'm certain." Fourteen years old, and already Cosette had the surety of rock to her. She smiled up at him. "Will you teach me?"

Valjean's smile flickered. Oh, he wanted to - teaching her to play piano and seeing the joy in her face as he led her to more and more intricate pieces was one of the most precious memories he had. Those days were as dear to him as gifted silver, as blessed as his sister's smile. There was nothing he wanted more at that moment than to be able to guide her on this new path, teach her and help her once more. Music had been theirs, their shared passion, a way to speak when she was too shy and he too hesitant to use words. 

But Valjean knew his skills, and he had never been gifted with the violin. He could not teach her, not the way she deserved to be taught - this was something she wanted, that he alone could not give her.

It stung. Unfairly, he knew. She was his world, but he could not be hers. She deserved better than a sad old man.

He had been silent too long. He patted her shoulder and steeled himself. She deserved the best. "I'm afraid I'm not as good with the violin as I am with the piano, dear." Cosette frowned, very slightly, and Valjean was both warmed and broken by it. "But I will help you as much as I can, and we can find a teacher together."

Briefly, Valjean thought of Javert, his perfectionism and his skill. Even now, Valjean had never met a player his equal. But no, that would never work out. Javert probably had never forgiven him, anyway, and Valjean had no idea where to find him.

Suddenly, he had his arms full of a smiling young girl. "But you'll be my accompaniment, right?"

The ache in his heart eased as if it had never been. "Of course I will, my dear. Whenever you want."

And in the meantime, he could write a few pieces for her to start on.

 

 

Javert unpacked his belongings in his new apartment in Paris. It didn’t take long, and never had. His possessions were few, if well-cared for: music stand, bookcases filled with books of musical theory and history (and his guilty pleasure, detective novels), a desk, a computer, and most precious of all, his violin.

The position at Paris National Orchestra was prestigious; even if he was no longer concert master as he was in M-sur-M, he would be able to prove himself once more. Even if he was forced to take a smaller apartment than before, one much too close to familiar neighborhoods for his preference, it would be worth it.

It would be worth it to no longer be in M-sur-M, with its failing economy and sea-salt smell, where the orchestra still talked fondly of Valjean even years later - no matter what rumors had spread about the man afterwards, no matter what Javert himself said, the other players still longed for the indulgence and 'charity' of their long-gone conductor, and the music suffered for it.

(In brief moments of doubt, the sort that Javert rarely had, he remembered that he once appreciated Valjean's talent at conducting, and that the conductors that had replaced him were lacking something. But those moments were flickers, 64th notes out of tune in an otherwise flawless symphony.)

It would be worth it. He had music and the chance to play it (the same songs, over and over again, to barely appreciative socialites who were only there to look cultured, but that was unfitting and bitter) and that was all he had ever asked for. More than he deserved.

And Madeline continued to release music, a balm when the bitterness was too much - and had begun to write pieces intended for violin. They were... different, from his previous violin pieces, calmer and sweeter where previous works would be angry and vicious. Many of the pieces had the tag "for C" - they were simpler, but elegant and inspiring. Songs tagged "for F" were rarer, and slower, mourning tunes - and rarest of all, but Javert's favorites, were the songs labelled "For J", fast and dramatic, like lightning and thunder on a page, but often grieving nonetheless.

Whoever Madeline was writing for (and it was still strange, and uncomfortable, thinking of Madeline as a person, with a life outside of music - maybe a family, a spouse, some occupation other than music for he only took donations) the emotional intensity was breathtaking. Even now, nearly twenty years after Javert had first stumbled onto his work, Madeline remained the most talented, and mysterious, composer he had ever found.

Javert had done research, of course, trying to track down any information he could about Madeline, trying to understand the man who had opened his eyes to what was truly possible with music - but he never found any facts. The only evidence of his existence was his music. (It was pure, almost.)

Javert finished setting up his beaten computer and nodded, once. He had a few hours before he had to do anything, and it was better to work out the acoustics of the apartment sooner rather than later. He flipped open his violin case, and started adjusting his strings.

 

 

Valjean smiled at the motley crew of youth assembled in the music hall, scanning over them approvingly.

There was a bass player in the corner, an elaborate painting of skulls and flowers on his case - as Valjean watched the young man started to sketch out the lines of a poem in an open spot on the wood. The oldest youth, younger than his bald head made him look, rooting around in his case for a spare oboe reed after his broke just before practice. A young man looked over his flute, cleaning it meticulously with alcohol pads and then q-tips. A teenager, too thin and grinning like an imp over his drum set - a trumpet player covered in tattoos and snoring with his trumpet on his chest, stretched out over three seats.

And there - Cosette looked up from her music book and waved at him, smiling wide. She'd found this little group of music students and practiced with them every week for months now, but Valjean had stayed at home, not wanting to intrude in his daughter’s life. But Cosette had insisted that he was welcome to listen to them practice - "Or conduct, even, if you really want to!" - so he finally let her drag him to the music hall one of the students rented.

"Papa!" Cosette tackled him in a hug as soon as he got close enough to her. Some of the other students looked up but Cosette ignored them. "I am so glad you came, we're practicing a very difficult piece tonight and I wanted you to be here for it..."

"Anything you like, precious." He smiled down at her - and then narrowed his eyes as he looked past her at the young man lingering entirely too closely. "And this is...?"

The young man - clothes well-made if old, tall and thin with wide dark eyes - jumped at his regard, but Cosette slid between them easily. "Oh, papa, this is Marius, the cello player I'm going to do a piece with in the next concert. I told you about that, right?"

"You did tell me you would be playing a duet, but you did not tell me who it was with." Valjean patted Cosette's shoulder. "I'm sure you will do wonderfully."

Cosette stepped back and smiled, shyly. Marius continued to watch them with wide-eyed nervousness. Valjean considered glaring at him.

"Thank you papa, but really, I'm not sure that we're going to be ready in time if we only practice once a week like we've been doing." Valjean raised his eyebrows, seeing the question coming and not liking it in the slightest. "So I was wondering if he could possibly come over and we can practice at home?" Valjean opened his mouth, but Cosette beat him to it: "Only when you're there, of course, and you'll be able to supervise."

Valjean closed his mouth, inclining his head. If the looks that the boy kept shooting Cosette were any indication... Well, perhaps it would be good to get to know the boy a bit, before anything actually happened.

And it was so hard to deny Cosette anything.

"Very well." Cosette hugged him again, while Marius continued to stare at him like a frightened rabbit. He could not begrudge these children, who had given Cosette community and friendship. "But first, what will you be playing tonight?"

 

 

Javert closed his eyes and very deliberately blocked out the noises around him. He was irritated by this concert to begin with, arranged by a rich patron for - his daughter in law, or future daughter in law.  Something like that, it hardly mattered. The only reason this concert was being held was that Msr. Gillenormand was one of the most important patrons of the Paris National Orchestra, and felt that he could order a concert whenever he liked.

Of course, the conductor and managers explained it differently, something about honoring the contributions to the arts, but Javert knew full well. They had been bought, live entertainment purchased by rich socialites to impress other rich socialites.

(Without those rich patrons, he reminded himself, he would not have his position. His precious violin, far too expensive to purchase on his own, had been a gift from a patron who had enjoyed his work. Madeline, surely, had to be a rich and cultured man to be able to produce the work that he did. Music depended on these worthy patrons contributing and appreciating it. Indulging them was his duty.)

(He knew all of this, but the thoughts lingered, like a sour note in a solo.) 

Allowing the sounds of Madeline's latest composition - a slower piece, more mournful than his pieces labeled “for C” tended to be, a duet for cello and violin - to overpower the cacophony of people tuning their instruments. Like counting off a decade on a rosary, he applied rosin to his bow and strings evenly. Javert was first violin, as before, but such a position could only be maintained with effort and dedication, even greater than that required by those beneath him.

He paused a moment to glare at the second violin, a rich boy who'd started playing when he was seven or younger, a student playing in the best orchestra while spending most of his time on political causes and not on practices. Enjorlas caught his glare and returned it unblinkingly, without respect, and turned back to chatting with one of his equally disrespectful friends.

Javert normally would correct him, attempt to teach him the basics of decorum and the proper behavior before a concert, but that usually resulted in arguments. And shouting where patrons (customers) could hear was almost as rude as not showing up for practices, or not learning a piece. Javert had done that once, and would never do so again. The memory still brought a brush of shame to him, and not just for what came before and after it.

So Javert adjusted his pins and tested each string - hardly necessary, he knew this instrument like his own body, but a good practice nonetheless - before something managed to work its way past his insulation. He looked up from his instrument to see - ah, the lady of the hour, breaking away from conversation with the son of the patron to approach the orchestra. Someone gestured to Javert, in a hesitant sort of way, but the young woman came up to him with a smile.

"Oh, hello, I'm sorry to interrupt, but I was told you're the concert master?" There was something familiar in her face, as much as Javert ever recognized faces - then she brushed dark curls away from her eyes and the sensation was gone. "I realize that the concert is tonight, and that I really shouldn't try to change the schedule any, but I thought I could ask?" 

Javert glared, but it seemed to have no effect on the girl, who waited with arms crossed behind her back. His first instinct was to tell her to leave the practice area so that he could continue tuning - but she was involved with a patron's son, and the patrons had the right to be rude. He did not rule them as he ruled his section.

"It's just a violin solo, and it's not complicated, so it shouldn't be any trouble to sight read..." The girl pulled out a few sheets of paper from her purse, flipping through them easily. Indeed, the piece did not appear to be long, but still. The girl held the pages out to Javert with an apologetic smile. He took the papers and blinked down at them - handwritten. He forced a scowl away from his face, but not very far.  "I'm very sorry for asking on the night of the performance, but I've only just convinced Papa to write something for me. I'd play it myself but /apparently/ I'm not allowed to perform on my birthday..."

Javert stared down at the papers, listening to the music in his head as he read. Handwritten, yes, but neat with it, a confident hand used to writing music.... He listened to the notes in his head and then - stopped.

"Miss," He said, something twanging in the back of his mind, a snapped string, or a landslide, "Who wrote this?"

Her smile widened, as if it were praise, said in admiration and not in shock. "Oh, my father wrote it! He's very talented, though of course he'd never admit it -"

"Is he here?"

Now the girl blinked, but her smile didn't fade. "Yes, I think he's over by the..." She turned around, glancing over the people preparing for the party, and pointed. "Yes, he's helping set up tables, over by the…” The twanging in his mind was too loud for Javert to hear what she said after that, a cacophony of emotion blocking out any input, because he saw who she was pointing at and –

 

 

Valjean sighed under his breath in between arranging tables for Cosette's party. He was happy, he /was/, but it was a sort of bittersweet happiness, his experience in minor key where everyone else's was in major.

Cosette was growing, a brilliant and talented young woman full of light and joy. Valjean was so proud of her, how she’d grown and the amazing person she was becoming. But the more she grew, the less she needed him – a tree that no longer needed stakes for support against harsh winds.

He was no longer needed. And if the looks that Cosette and Marius gave each other were any indication… Marius had spent several weeks now, at their regular music dates, looking like he was trying to gather the nerve to ask something. Valjean was not, quite, sure what the answer would be.

He could not deny it, though: Marius made her happy and did his best to do well by her. Did Valjean have any right to stand in the way of it?

Valjean shook his head, setting up the last of the tables. This was for her birthday party, and he would not ruin it with his moping. As out of place as he felt amongst these youngsters, Cosette said that she wanted him here. She’d even wheedled a composition out of him, though how she knew to ask….

“Papa!” He looked up, smiling at his daughter, radiance in her dress and her smile, “I talked to the concert master and he wanted to…” She trailed off as Valjean stared past her.

Trailing behind her was – the man was tall, broad shouldered; there were streaks of grey in his long hair that were new, and wrinkles around his eyes. Even with his mouth half-open in surprise, even years later, he was striking and unmistakable, the impression of him burned into the back of Valjean’s mind like a lightning bolt. Rarely prominent, but always present.  

“Javert.”

“Valjean.” The man’s voice was flat, too tight. For a moment Valjean was struck with the last time he’d seen the man, that disastrous night years ago – but no, there was nothing like that here, no outrage, just shock and the man’s hands clenching around the papers he held up. “You wrote this?”

“Yes, I apologize for the timing, but Cosette insisted -” Valjean began with an apologetic smile, but then he met Javert’s eyes again and – Oh. His smile dropped under the force of true regret. He should have expected this one day – sin’s payment could not be delayed forever. “…ah. I see.”

Another memory flashed in his mind like lightning – a practice room in an empty performance hall and Javert, carving music and passion out of the air – and Valjean’s heart ached once more. Yes, he should have seen this coming.

“You wrote this.” This time, it wasn’t a question, and yet it was. Valjean knew what he meant, and nodded.

Javert held his eyes for a long moment, and then glanced down at the pages again. Then without another word, Javert turned and began to walk away, barely stopping to pack up his violin. The music pages fell from his lax hand and fluttered to the floor.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Play "spot the Amis!"


	3. semplice

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> semplice: simply
> 
> illustration by Kaleran!

Javert slumped on his threadbare chair, staring down at the envelope in his hands.

He’d tried to resign, the next day. Regardless of Valjean, regardless of what was or wasn’t true, Javert had walked out a half hour before a performance for one of the main patrons of the orchestra – Javert had failed his duty and his profession. He /deserved/ to lose his chair, at the very least. Resigning was the most honorable recourse left to him.

He’d walked up to Conductor Gisquet, but had no opportunity to speak. The conductor had said, almost absently, that really after abandoning a performance like that Javert should be dismissed, but Msr. Valjean had explained that it was all his fault and had asked that Javert not be punished for it.

“Oh,” The conductor had added, hardly looking up from his bookkeeping to hold up a white envelope, “And he asked me to make sure that this got to you.”

Javert had taken it with shaking hands, mumbling gratitude and apologies, and now it sat in his hands. He’d hardly looked away from it on the bus home. Written on the front, in the same clear handwriting from the music at the party: For J.

Javert couldn’t stop thinking about Madeline’s compositions, and how many of them had been labelled the same way.

He opened the envelope as carefully as he could. Stiff fingers pulled out a piece of paper.

 

                “Javert,

                I’m sorry. I should have told you from the start.

                This piece is for you.

                Valjean”

 

Attached was a handwritten sheet of music.

Javert read it, his mind silent. His strings had snapped, his bow warped, sometime between recognizing what the girl had handed him and confronting Valjean – every thought out of tune, the tempo too slow or too fast.

Slowly the music played in the back of his mind as he read. He knew from the first glance that it was Madeline’s – as instantly as he’d known before. He would know Madeline’s work anywhere, in any context. (For a moment, he wished otherwise.) This was as unmistakably his – no forger could reproduce the clench in his throat when he read it.

It was beautiful.

Slow, mournful, like teardrops, like the last rays of sunlight before nightfall– something was cracking inside of Javert’s chest, rock that had stood stalwart for fifty years without crumbling beginning to sheer along nearly invisible fault lines under the weight of this music, this apology of cut diamonds set in silver –

(But was that rock so stalwart, was this so unexpected? For years Madeline’s work had been the one thing held sacred in his life, beauty and art tucked in some secret corner of his heart – a single bloom of emotion that he did not cull like he did all of the others, and now its roots had dug too deep into him to pull out.)

Valjean was Madeline, and wanted to apologize for not revealing himself. To him, with this. A beautiful piece of art, for Javert (how many of those pieces, he thought, had been labeled for J – he didn’t dare check), for the man who’d fought with every practice and performance, who’d tried to destroy his career and ruined his daughter’s party.

Javert traced the music, his finger hovering above the page. It was similar enough to previous works for him to see the continuity, but it was unique. Just for him. The thought of touching it, much less playing it, felt like sacrilege. Javert had insulted Madeline’s work with every performance, and he never knew it. Javert did not deserve to play it, not after what he’d done to the man.

But if he didn’t play it, would anyone? Did Javert have the right to lock up this jewel without it being it ever having been played?

Almost without thinking, he smoothed out the sheet of music and set it on the music stand in the middle of the room. It was written for violin, he realized, and in his own preferred range. For him, the note had read.

He picked up his violin and adjusted the strings automatically, noting that they would need to be replaced soon. Valjean always had spare strings for anyone in the orchestra, he remembered from years ago, even those who should have kept strings on them themselves.  Valjean even took time to care for that wrench of a woman, sick and angry from whatever she was on.

Generosity and concern for the undeserving. Music for a world that did not appreciate it. An apology for a man who had hurt him.

Javert set his violin on his shoulder, and the bow to the strings. His hands were shaking as they had not since he was a boy. Madeline had given him a gift, and as unworthy as he was, Javert could not make himself refuse it.

The piece was even more beautiful than he had thought it would be.

His eyes burned – sweat, surely – but he didn’t stop to wipe them. He kept playing, until he reached the end. His breath was short, and he had to force himself to breathe through the knot in his throat.

He swiped his sleeve across his eyes, and set his bow to his instrument again. He played this undeserved apology over and over again, until the notes sang in his ears and the bars burned in the darkness when he closed his eye, until he could play it from memory without hesitation. His wrist ached and his eyes burned and the knot of feeling in his throat was tight, but he kept playing.

 

 

Valjean stared down at his piano keys, his fingers still. The note had long since faded to silence but he did not play another one. His mind was silent like it hadn’t been in almost a decade, since Cosette smiled up at him from this very seat.

He sighed, looking away from the keys to the plants covering the top of the piano.  Succulents, these, to minimize the chance of any water damage to the piano. This room was his sanctuary, filled with all the plants he’d wanted in prison and the music that kept him sane there. Over the years, Cosette had become as regular a feature here as the piano she learned from – her violin stand was by the huge windows, next to a plant that she’d picked out herself.

But she was not here right now, and Valjean was stuck with nothing but the echoing silence inside of his own mind.

Seeing Javert again - the man who had been variously an inspiration and a frustration, an image buried in the back of his mind that would bloom without warning - had been a shock. Looking at him and knowing, without a doubt, that Javert had recognized Madeline's work in Valjean's hand - that was worse, that was guilt and betrayal, because he remembered the way that Javert had spoken about him so many years ago. He remembered the sparkles of passion in his expression, the rare /joy/ in the man's face when he spoke about the art that he loved. It had been enough to overpower the frustration of working with him.

Valjean remembered, still, looking at Javert and feeling his heart clench around a knot of emotion, a wonder that had not faded over all these years.

Knotted up with that wonder, even now, dying its colors sour and blurring its lines, was the guilt, the knowledge that Javert would never love the man as much as he loved the music - that the identity of the author would ruin the one thing that Javert found incorruptible. Destroying that would be unforgivable, as terrible as a stolen piccolo from a church orchestra, like burning a Stradivarius  - and yet, lies always came out, in the end.

Staring at Javert that night, the realization in those grey eyes, Valjean had watched the finely tuned instrument of the man's mind burn. And it was his own fault.

He'd done what he could to make sure that Javert wouldn't lose his position in the orchestra, and sent a composition, not nearly enough to make up for what he'd done to the man, but it was the only offering that Valjean knew how to give. And he hadn't been able to write anything since.

"Papa?" Valjean jerked his head up from where he had been blankly staring at the keys once more. Cosette didn't wait for his reply, but settled next to him on the piano bench like she had when she was a child and still learning how to play. She hardly fit anymore, but it didn't matter. "...I wanted to apologize."

Apologize - "Cosette, dear, you haven't -" Valjean half-turned, careful not to knock her off the bench. "Darling, if anything, I should apologize to you. It was your party, and I interrupted things with old issues. I'm sorry if that,"

"Papa," She took one hand in both of hers, and looked at him very seriously. "I'm not upset about the party. Everything worked out fine, and you couldn't have known that he would be there. I wanted to," here she glanced away, loose curls of hair over her face, but she didn't brush them away. "I know that you are a very private person, Papa, and that you don't tell anyone about the music you write." Valjean blinked, and Cosette smiled up at him, still wobbly. "If I had known that he would recognize your music, I would never have asked you for any. I just. Wanted your music at my party, and I didn't think about what would happen if someone recognize it, and I'm sorry for that." She leaned forward to hug him, burying her face against his shoulder.

Valjean stared down at her, one hand around her shoulders to keep her from tumbling off the bench. He let out a breath, almost laughing.

"Cosette, I - I forgive you, though I don't think you did anything wrong." She looked up to narrow her eyes at him, as if challenging him on that. He huffed out another laugh. He looked away, at the half finished composition that he'd abandoned in frustration an hour before. "...I suppose this is when I ask how you figured it out?"

Cosette laughed into his shoulder and pulled back. Now, she brushed curls away from her face and smiled at him. "Papa, I hear you working on things in here all the time, and then I see them again later online..." Valjean inclined his head. Put like that, it was an easy connection. Something in his throat had loosened - still guilty, still concerned about Javert, but Cosette knowing - Cosette having known all the while - helped, somehow. She knew, and loved him yet.

He wrapped both his arms around her, and kissed the top of her head. "Thank you, precious."

 

 

With the realization that Madeline was Valjean, other realizations inevitably followed it.

Each was as uncomfortable as the last, Javert’s mind stretching to accommodate each new thought and learning to play in its new position.

Javert remembered years before, fighting with Valjean over everything in the orchestra. He had judged Valjean to be an interloper, a trumped up laborer with a bit of talent who didn't bother to act appropriately for his new position. Javert was little more than that, himself, and knew it - he knew his skin color and the scraps of his childhood accent he'd never been able to erase would tell his family history to anyone who cared to look. He was unworthy to step in the hallowed halls and institutions where music was brought to life, and could only hope to earn his place here with hard work and dedication.

Javert had earned that place, but always with the knowledge that his place was by work and not by birth. He was an outsider to music, a servant and not a master. He was in service to a greater work, and his life had purpose, and that was enough. The music he had played then, and played since, was not for him.

(Madeline's work had felt like it was for him, and perhaps that was the most beguiling part of all.)

He had resented Valjean, then. Resented his tattoos and his generosity and how he acted as if he had a right to his position. It had culminated in the conflict over the woman, and Javert spilling his opinions in a letter to the patrons, and Valjean losing his position with the orchestra. Valjean hadn't worked in the field since. Javert had considered it fitting, a deserved punishment.

Standing on a bridge overlooking the Seine, Javert was forced to consider that he might have been wrong.

If Valjean was Madeline, then every assumption Javert had made about him was wrong. A man who could create the art that Madeline did could not be a criminal, could not be a convict. Years had passed, and Javert had only ever heard rumors of criminal history, things that confirmed what he already wanted to know. He'd been so certain at the time, but it could not be truth. Madeline could not be a laborer, a convict. Beauty did not come from such sour soil.

He had been wrong, and with it destroyed Valjean's career. The crack inside of his chest widened - he did not deserve to hold Madeline's work in his hand, such a precious piece of art that his heart ached even to think of it. But Madeline apologized to him, for some reason, Madeline had known all that he did to hurt him and made this work for him.

Madeline - Valjean - had thought him worthy of it. Perhaps it was pity for the hopeless; perhaps it was something that Javert could not begin to understand.

It was - painful, the knowledge of what he had been given. What he had always been given, now that he knew to look for it. (He'd looked at just how many of Madeline's works had been marked For J, and the number made his fingers tremble like he was a child.)

Javert had wronged an artist, a patron, a man worthy of his respect, and the weight of his failure pressed down on his shoulders. His fingers clenched on the rock wall. He ignored the stares of people passing - this was a popular place for suicides, he knew, because of the swiftness of the current here. Javert thought about it, briefly. But the weight of Madeline's gift tugged him back from that space in his mind where the void was - he carried in his mind a string of diamonds, and he could not bear to consign them to the deep yet.

(And if someone went through his things after his death, they would find the note and draw the appropriate conclusions. It was clear, by now, that Madeline preferred his privacy and Javert would not destroy that. He had sinned against the man – he would not compound them now)

So he stepped away from the wall, and kept walking.

 

 

"Music is meant to be heard," Madeline had posted on his website, once, in response to someone's question about posting music for free. Javert had noticed it and acknowledged it, because of course that was true, but it had settled down at the bottom of his soul and stayed there in the hidden corners.

(The flower that was Madeline's music had sprouted, there in that hidden crevasse in his soul, and each new piece fed it, each new bit of wisdom watered it until it could break apart the rock it grew in. Like warping wood or erosion, Javert was beginning to realize that the shape of him had been changing for years – that slowly, slowly he had allowed himself to shift to Madeline’s shaping.)

Music was meant to be heard, Madeline said. Music was meant to be played. But few orchestras would play Madeline’s music – Javert knew he would not be able to convince the conductor to add the apology to the schedule, not without explaining everything.

For a moment, he wanted to rage at the unfairness of it. Madeline deserved to be played in every music hall, known to every performer. But the patrons would look at where he published, look at his lack of established identity, and refuse to even look.

There’s no money in playing an unknown composer, a few had told him. No one would come to a performance for this man.

They knew best, Javert reminded himself. Without the institution there would be no opportunities for a musician – without the patrons, he would never have had the chance to perform on stage or to own the instrument that he did. He owed them everything.

But to ignore Madeline’s work… Javert shook his head. Madeline was a cultured man, that much was obvious from his work. Valjean was rich enough to find his way amongst patrons of the orchestra. He made the choice, knowing his options.

But music was meant to be heard. This piece, this beautiful apology he had been gifted with, was meant to be heard.

So Javert found himself here, grass under his feet and the soft bubbling of a fountain behind him. He rolled his shoulders, uncomfortable with being in public this way. He had performed on stage for decades, but here in Paris Central Park, with no audience but the trees around him and the passersby that for now ignored him, was different somehow. This was not a stage, this was not a music hall.

Like the thought of Madeline having a life and a face outside of music, playing music out in the open this way settled badly inside of his mind. It was - improper, almost, to play here where anyone could hear. He glanced around, as if he were doing something improper, but he wasn't, really - people played in the park often, amateur guitarists and performance artists running through their sets, painters sketching and actors rehearsing lines - but it had been years since he had played in a public space like this. A decade, or two.

He was practicing here rather than in his apartment, perhaps. No, that was an excuse, and no more of those. He had made his choice.

Enough stalling. Javert opened up his violin case, and checked over it instinctually. He let out a deep breath, and set the violin to his shoulder. He had no music stand. He did not need one.

He began with a piece from years ago, when he was still in M-Sur-M - Wolftongue, it was titled, and it was the very first piece that bore the mark For J. Javert had loved it the first time he heard it, sharp and vicious joy, the sensation of pushing himself to the top of a great and glorious peak - suddenly, so sharp that he nearly lost his tempo, he remembered practicing in the music hall and Valjean finding him, and Javert speaking of Madeline -

His lips twisted down, and he forced himself to focus on the music. Valjean could have told him, he thought - but would he have believed him? Of course not. This piece, this piece, Javert stretched his mind to remember - was posted a few days later, after Valjean had heard him speak so glowingly of Madeline.

Oh.

He finished the piece on automatic, his mind reeling at that thought. Even then, even when Javert had been little more than a frustration and an enemy, Madeline had written this for him. Had known of his admiration and acknowledged it, even if Javert did not realize it then. He swallowed, hard, (and ignored the trembling crack as the roots dug deeper into him) and absently rubbed rosin over his bow before setting it to the strings once more.

He played until he dropped fully into the music, oblivious to the rest of the world - he retained enough awareness to mind his bow and his case, but little more. His mind emptied and then filled up again with notes, with the ringing clarity of the music against his soul - he was absorbed, melding with the music in a way he rarely allowed himself to be, and never on stage. He /felt/, his heart beating in time to the music, and he noticed himself shifting to it, pouring his emotions into it - it was improper, to pour so much of himself into it, but Madeline had written this for /him/ so perhaps -

-he could never do this on stage, he thought, traitorously, adjusting his grip on his bow - he could never feel so much on stage, the patrons would never stand for it. He was not there to be seen, his presence necessary but only tolerable if he made himself as invisible as possible -

he finished a song and in the moment before starting the next he realized his wrists ached, like he'd played longer than he'd planned for, and there was a small crowd of listeners surrounding him. He blinked at them, heat creeping up his neck, and turned away to put his violin away without acknowledging them further.

He'd done this so that the music would be heard, but to have an audience focused entirely on him was - uncomfortable. Worse than a solo, somehow.

He looked down at his case and frowned at the small pile of bills that had somehow accumulated there while he was playing. He hadn't - this wasn't for - he hadn't busked since he was a teenager, and the memories were those he'd rather leave behind. He had no desire to go back to starving himself, skipping meals to afford new strings, having to choose between rent money and what few lessons he could get. Busking was necessary when he was younger, but -

(He wasn't always doing it for the money, he thought. He just wanted a place to play where no one would bother him, where he could play whatever he wanted rather than what he was told to play.)

Nevertheless, people had left tips, and it was impossible to know who - and rude to try and return it. He frowned, shoving the money into a pocket. Decide what to do with it later, then, away from the crowd around him. Madeline always had donation links up, didn't he? As much as Javert galled at the idea of charity....

"Hey, man, you're pretty good!" Javert’s shoulders tensed at the compliment, even as he looked up at the young woman offering it. She had dark hair, cut short and messy, and a boy’s shirt hanging too loosely on her thin frame. She grinned at him and part of her front tooth was missing. “I play some myself, but not like /that/.” She gestured with her left hand – distinctive calluses on her fingers from long hours of practice.

Almost unwillingly, Javert’s frown softened. “Continue to practice, then.”

The girl rolled her eyes a little bit, but continued to grin. He did not doubt that she already practiced often, and so his instruction was less harsh than it would have been otherwise. He could see her about to talk, to drag him into conversation – but his shoulders itched, and he had been here overlong, and so he nodded to her and closed the case.

As he returned home, he felt – he would not analyze it, but he /felt/ nonetheless. (Inside of his chest, the rock cracked and crumbled.)

 

 

Cosette was settled on the window seat, adjusting her violin pins with one hand, while Valjean sketched out ideas at the piano. It was – a relief, to not have to hide his work, to have someone to listen to his ideas and comment on them, encouragement or questions. It was pleasant and peaceful, a quiet communion of music that he had not felt since he left the Bishop’s church. It was a blessing unlooked for, as precious as every moment with Cosette was, and all the more precious for how little Valjean expected it.

"Papa?" Valjean turned away from trimming dead leaves from a house plant. Cosette was looking down at her violin, but looked up with a smile. "At the party, the concert master who recognized your writing. Did you know him from somewhere?"

Valjean opened his mouth and then closed it again, looking away. He let out a breath and went back to gently pulling leaves off of the plant, smiling sadly. "I - worked with him, once. At the orchestra where I met your mother, he was concert master there as well. He is," Valjean tilted his head in thought, trying to pick a single descriptor for Javert, "Strict, but very talented. Why do you ask?"

Cosette adjusted her pins a little bit more, humming under her breath. She cared for her mother's instrument as if it were her child - indeed, she named it Katherine after her childhood doll. She looked up at him with raised eyebrows.

"He clearly knew you from somewhere, Papa, and you have so few friends." She looked pointedly at him, as if attempting to convince him to start dating, though she hadn’t done that since he explained how little he was interested in it. Valjean chuckled, rubbing the back of his neck. It was true that Valjean kept to himself, but he was happy with his plants and his piano and his daughter.

(In truth, his dismissal from M-sur-M shook him badly - there was no need for him to hide his criminal history, his parole long since ended, but he knew why Javert had judged him, and knew that others would as well.)

(In deeper truth, he rarely thought about romance, or even companionship, having never felt the need that other people did for it. Those rare moments when he did, there was only ever one image in his mind - those few moments in M-sur-M when he earned Javert's grudging tolerance, or when the exterior dropped away and Valjean could see the passion and beauty the man kept hidden underneath proper posture and professionalism.)

Cosette just hummed under her breath, as if deep in thought.

 

 

Much to his own surprise, Javert went back to the park to play. 

It was different from performing, though he often gathered a crowd of listeners. He was not there for them - he was not playing for anyone but himself, and that was relaxing in a way he'd forgotten. For years, he'd played for patrons or auditions, flawless and professional, reducing himself to a speaker that the music would flow through. He'd forgotten what it was like to play for nothing but the music, where nothing mattered but himself and the notes.

He remembered, settling into position and flipping through songs in his head, playing on street corners for spare change - for the first time, he thought of the time before his first audition and remembered not the shame of it, being too poor and too coarse to hold the bow in his hands, but rather he remembered the joy in his limbs, the knowledge that he was able to produce something beautiful, that his hands were not destined for violence or picking locks.

It had been so many years since he had allowed himself to feel joy, anything more than the satisfaction of a flawless performance.

The crowd around him shifted as he settled into the Apology, a piece he rarely played for anyone else. But he could not make himself not play it. The young woman from the first time was there, chatting with some young boy with percussionist's calluses and a similar smile. He did not catch their names - indeed, Javert had not spoken to either of them, or anyone else, since that first time. He ignored them all, because they were just - addendums. He was not here for them.

He dropped into the music, and let the world fade away. Every time, more so every time, his eyes burned when he played it - his breath stuttered as he had to remember that this was a gift he did not deserve, that this treasure was one unsuited for his hands. But it was enough that it was heard, that even if those listening did not appreciate what it meant they would still feel it, be touched by it even if they did not understand  - he remembered being a child, listening to music through a neighbor's door or in between his mother's preferred shows, hearing snippets of symphonies and not knowing what he it was that had touched him but only that it was /important/ somehow - like the first time he'd heard Madeline's music, like something green and growing blooming in the back of his mind where there had only been grey bars and steel -

Javert finished the piece with a harsh breath and knew instantly that he was done for the day. His heart - that thing that Madeline had planted within him - ached and he could not bear to play any longer. He forced himself to relax his shoulders as he glanced at his case - there were dollars on his case, again, even though he'd made no indication of wanting the money. (He'd decided, a few trips back, that he would listen to some of the amateurs in the park and if he found any worthy of support, they would receive any of the tips he’d received. It was not charity, he reasoned.)

He breathed in, pulled his violin from his shoulder, and looked up -

and then froze.

Valjean - Madeline - stood across from him, on the other side of the crowd. Madeline stared at him and Javert's first instinct was guilt, as if he had been caught out, so much like the day in the practice room, so many years ago - as if this action above all the others would prove him unworthy, as this would be it -

Madeline smiled at him, wide and honest and happy, and the bloom inside of Javert's chest burst open, dripping nectar and sap over his ribcage.

 

 

Valjean stared at Javert from across the small group of listeners. Behind him, Cosette giggled - this had been her idea, dragging him out to the park to with the excuse of fresh air and new plants, but now he realized that she was far cleverer than she had let on - and pushed at the space between his shoulder blades.

"Go say hello, papa." Another shove at his shoulder blades. "Go on!"

Valjean stepped forward, reached forward almost without thinking. Javert was still staring at him, still beautiful even though he'd stopped playing - and he'd been playing /that/ piece, the one Valjean had written to apologize, his throat swollen shut with guilt and misery. Javert was playing it, and made it /beautiful/ - taken the rough brushes of emotion and culpability and carved them into diamonds, notes sweeping silver stars against dark pain.

Well. Apology accepted, then.

He looked away for a moment, awkward, rubbing the back of his neck - but Cosette prodded him again, and so Valjean stepped forward through the remains of the crowd until he was standing face to face with Javert.

There were surely words for this situation, but Valjean had never been good with words. He did not have words for the emotions fluttering in his chest – an aria, he thought, that’s what this was, something high and sweeping; or maybe something simpler, a key change that changed everything -

Javert was still staring at him. He'd set his violin against his arm, holding it effortlessly, the instrument an extension of his own self. Valjean rubbed the back of his neck again and tried not to look away.

"....You played it." No, too vague, Valjean thought, could mean anything, of all the opening lines to use - Javert glanced away, down at his instrument and then back at Valjean. His eyes were so grey, like storm clouds or steel, something powerful and unbreakable.

"...Music is meant to be heard." It took Valjean a moment to place the quote, and then - oh, oh. Someone had asked him - well, Madeline - why bother publishing music if he wasn't going to make money from it, and that was the only response Valjean had been able to give that felt true. Valjean smiled, helplessly, because he'd known Javert enjoyed his work but to see evidence of it was always somehow /more/ -

And with that thought came the guilt, the knowledge that he did not deserve his regard, a chain around his ankle that led back to a prison cell. Even if Javert were able to look past it to Madeline, he would never see more. Valjean shouldn't have come - he should have let Javert keep his fantasy - he should have -

"You're very talented, Monsieur!" Cosette darted out from behind Valjean, sliding in between easily and smiling widely. Javert blinked down at her. "I play violin, but I am nowhere as skilled as you." Javert opened his mouth to respond, but Cosette didn't give him the opportunity. "Are you taking students right now? I would love for you to teach me." Cosette tilted her head, giggling, loose curls tumbling from her headband. "Papa's very talented, but he's not as skilled with the violin."

Javert opened his mouth again, his eyes darting between Valjean and Cosette. Valjean had to struggle not to laugh - Cosette was fearless, had been since she came out of her shell as a child, and Javert was not the first to be unsure of how to respond to it. Javert frowned at her, the expression that had once cowed an entire section into silence, but Cosette just smiled back at him unintimidated.

(Valjean couldn't shake the impression that somewhere in Heaven, Fantine was laughing.)

"Cosette, precious," Valjean cut in, taking mercy on the flabbergasted Javert, "Let the man put his violin away before you try and recruit him into teaching you."

Cosette pouted, but stepped back to allow Javert space to put his violin away - and also gather his own thoughts.

"I am... I have time to teach, yes." Javert finally said, after settling his violin reverently in its case. His expression was still somewhat bewildered. "If you are willing to put in the practice time that I will require," he added, as if in warning. 

"Of course!" Cosette spun to face Valjean again, smiling beguilingly. Perhaps all of this was merely an attempt to get a new teacher after all. "Papa, would this be okay? Only have practice when you’re there, of course, just like always.”

Valjean raised his eyebrows at her, but inclined his head.

 

 

Javert set his violin case down on the piano bench and tried not to look obviously uncomfortable.

He had, apparently, agreed to teach Madeline's daughter. He was not sure quite how that happened - he was still wrapping his mind around the idea that Madeline /had/ a daughter, much more one that resembled him so little, his mind still adjusting to the idea that Madeline had a life and an existence of his own - but Madeline had asked, and Javert owed him so much, and was unable to say no.

So he had come here with his violin, to this small house near the cathedral, and walked into Madeline's home like he was allowed. So he greeted Madeline as he entered, and followed the young woman who did not look like his daughter to their music room, and was going to try and teach her.

The room was not what he had imagined, thinking of Madeline's sanctuary - there was a piano, yes, and Cosette was adjusting a violin stand nearby. But rather than the austere and secluded hide away he had pictured, with no interruptions and no distractions - there was a wall of windows to his left, overlooking a garden and nearly every surface covered in plants. Blooming flowers by the windows, framing Cosette in white blossoms and making the whole room smell sweet and cloying -  herbs near on shelves in the back of the room, planters alternating with books of musical theory and religion - tiny cactuses and aloes on top of the piano, on protective covering to avoid water damage to the instrument.

And near the plants on the piano - Javert tilted his head, something thudding in his throat as he realized that there were notebooks scattered amongst the plants, music bars filled with the neat handwriting that had been burned into his mind - this was where Madeline wrote, this was where art was created -

"Oh, yes, Papa is always leaving his notebooks around." Javert jerked back, feeling again like he had been caught out - but Cosette was just smiling at him, her violin set on the bench by the window. "Every now and then I'll gather them up from all over the house and leave them on the bench just so that he doesn't lose any of them."

So domestic. So /human/. It was hard to picture, and yet, it was in front of his eyes.

Javert inclined his head rather than replying. He would not open up his violin case yet - at first he would see what she was capable of. He shook off the shuddering knowledge that Madeline was in the next room, not even a shut door separating them, and forced himself to look at the girl as a student.

She held the instrument careful, but not fearfully - he narrowed his eyes at the instrument, something familiar about it, but no matter.

"I want to see how you play." She nodded and set the violin to her shoulder - again, that jolt of familiarity, she did not look like Madeline but then who? - and began to play.

 

 

The girl was talented, enough that Javert did not think teaching her would be useless. He rarely taught students, in truth having little practice for the failings of amateurs, and demanded much of any student he took. Few were willing to put up with it.

He had learned from imitating performers, rarely able to afford official lessons - a few times, he was able to afford lessons from an retired performer in his apartment building, just enough to make sure that his posture wouldn't destroy his ability to play in the future. By the time he was making enough money to afford regular lessons, he hadn't needed them.

But the girl had potential. He corrected her posture once or twice, reminded her to mind her bow - she took corrections cheerfully, another point in her favor. She favored slower tempos, which was no flaw, but he would push her to practice faster pieces regardless.

"You handle the instrument well," he said, noting her care for it. Not unexpected, that Madeline's daughter would treat her instrument with the respect it deserved, but reassuring regardless.

Cosette smiled widely. Javert wasn't sure he had ever been smiled at by a student quite this much. "Thank you, monsieur!" The girl was fearless, and something in that, plus that violin.... "It was my mother's," she said, her smile faltering slightly as she carefully returned the instrument to its case, "She died when I was young, and had been ill for some time before that, so the only thing I have from her is this." She smiled up at him, still melancholy but seemingly unshakable. "Papa has said that she was in your section, when you were in his orchestra. Do you remember her?"

Javert stared at her, at the instrument that suddenly, he did recognize - the woman, the wench who clung to Valjean's arm, always late to practice and refusing to correct her posture. Fantine, her name was. The woman over whom he destroyed Valjean's career. He did not remember the shape of her face but he remembered the instrument that she did not deserve to hold. The instrument know held by her - daughter, Madeline's - Valjean's daughter.

Cosette blinked at him, her smile slipping away at his long silence. "I'm sorry, if you do not remember her, I'd just thought..."

Javert did not lie, would not lie, but he had never been so tempted in his life. "I - do remember her." He glanced away, because he was a coward, and found a diplomatic answer. "We did share a section, but we were not... close."

How could such a woman produce this child? Fantine had been snarling with anger, always more willing to argue than practice, drug addled and sickly. Cosette was diligent and even tempered, ever-cheerful. It was no wonder it took so long for him to notice the resemblance.

"Oh." Cosette looked away, rubbing a spot off of the violin's case. "I was just wondering. I lived... elsewhere, when she played there, and then she was so weak from the chemo and we spent most of the time in the hospital.... Papa tells me all he could, but I like hearing what she was like when she wasn't sick." Cosette smiled at him thinly, but Javert's mind was reeling and he could not reply.

Chemotherapy. Cancer. Not illicit drugs, then - it was not illegal substances that had made her so weak and thin, but illness. Perhaps he would have known this, if he had asked. But he had not. He had not cared to.

He had assumed he knew the truth, and he had been wrong. He had not only misjudged Madeline, thinking him nothing more than a convict who had cheated his way into his position, but also the woman that he had apparently favored. He had been angry, and in his anger, been harsh to a dying woman and the man trying to help her.

Javert swallowed. Suddenly, he could not stay in this house, with this girl smiling at him in a way her mother never had. He could not be here in this sanctuary filled with Madeline's art and mercy. He did not deserve to be here. Even in his excellence, in the place where he had ruled, he had misjudged and harmed those who did not deserve it.

He had disgraced the institution of music with his behavior – he had been petty and selfish and self-righteous, never worthy of the trust that had been put in him. He had not risen above his origins: he had merely carried the rot into the realm of his betters. Beauty could not come from sick soil.

He was not sure what he said as he left her there, muttering something and gathering up his violin before fleeing the house.

 

 

Valjean smiled awkwardly as Javert settled into the chair across from him. He'd refused Valjean's offer of tea, looking almost as uncomfortable as Valjean, and sat like a man at an audition he expected to fail - but he'd come, even after how he'd nearly fled from Cosette's first lesson.

Dear Cosette. She'd been convinced that she'd done something wrong - Valjean had tried for years to wash away the fear that her childhood had left her with, but every now and then the old skittishness would come out. He'd done all he could to reassure her. This was his fault, after all.

Valjean folded his hands around his mug, tapping out a section of something he was working on against the ceramic, and let out a breath. He was no good with words, but he'd practiced these beforehand.

"I apologize," He started, looking down at his tea. A noise from across the table, but he didn't look up. "I should have known that Cosette would ask about her mother. I realize that the two of you had never gotten along," a statement nearly comical in its understatement, and Valjean had to smile. "I should have known that the reminder would make you uncomfortable. I'm sorry."

Valjean looked up to see Javert staring at him in blank surprise. Javert blinked and turned his head away, as if he were hiding in his collar, and then stiffened his shoulders and met Valjean's stare head on. It was a familiar posture - one Valjean knew from his own childhood, one he saw in some of Cosette's friends.

"You have nothing to apologize for, monsieur." Javert said, his hands tensing and then relaxing on the table. "Indeed, I should apologize to you, and the young lady. My behavior towards her mother and towards you was appalling, and unfitting of the position I held then or the one I hold now." Javert looked down - in another era, another place, he would be on his knees. "I.... After we argued, I - I had assumed about your past, and your motivations with her, and I wrote to the patrons of the orchestra, and.”

Oh.

Javert looked up, so openly miserable – such emotion, on a man that normally showed little on his face – and then looked down again.

“I fought you over your direction of the orchestra, and I fought you over - her, and then I ruined your career with rumor and slander. And even after that, you have continued to honor me with your music, and allow me to teach your daughter, and I." Javert's hands clenched once more. "I do not deserve your apologies or your work, and I do not understand why you offer either."

Without thinking, Valjean reached across the table and laid his hand on top of Javert's. Javert jerked like a startled horse, but did not pull his hand away.

"Javert, I forgave you for those things years ago. I took that position fully expecting someone to find out about my prison record and me for it." Another jerk of Javert's hand, but he still did not move. "The fact that it happened when it did allowed me to focus on taking care of Cosette, and for that I am grateful." Valjean huffed a laugh, finally pulling his hand back after what was probably too long to be polite. "I had expected people to find out sooner, really." He rubbed at his arm, where one of his prison tattoos was concealed under his long sleeves. "I'm self-taught, and I never acted as a conductor should, and I have a farmer's accent, and. Well, you know how things are."

Valjean had no doubt that Javert did know - Javert hid it well, acted as stiff and professional as any classically trained performer, but he couldn't hide the color of his skin, or his very carefully neutral accent, or the meticulous concern he took to his possessions, or the stiff-necked pride of someone who refused charity.

Javert stared at him, something in his eyes that Valjean did not understand, but he carried on. "So, I suppose, if you accept my apology I will accept yours, and we will both move on?" Javert blinked, as if knocked out of a trance, and nodded stiffly. 

 

 

Javert walked from Madeline's - from /Valjean's/ house in a daze.

He had been wrong. Again. Perhaps he had been correct. He wasn't sure.

He had thought - but it didn't make any sense that - but it was unavoidable that -

He did not return to his own apartment, in a much poorer area of town than this, or even stop at the bus stop for his route. Instead he walked without direction and somehow ended up at the park, passing buskers on the grass and tossing spare change to them without thinking and without acknowledging their thanks.

Javert ended up at the fountain where he normally played, but he did not have his violin with him today and the thought of playing here was - he did not know, it was a sour note where Madeline had almost always been sweetness -

(Had the flower he allowed in his heart always truly been a weed, a parasite that would destroy him-)

Valjean was a convict. He had said so. He was self-taught, and poor, and a convict.

Madeline was an artist who created the most heart-rending beautiful work that Javert had ever encountered, the music that lit his soul up like he was a candle and it a match, generous and selfless and forgiving.

They were the same man.

The impossibility of it, the duality, pressed down on him. He was crushed under the weight, his world twisting, everything he'd thought he'd known snapping and slicing up his mind as it broke -

Javert had lied to himself, pretended that what he knew could not be true. He had seen the evidence and decided that the opposite was true - but that was what made /sense/, the only thing that he understood, because he knew how things were. Convicts could not become anything more than what they were; art did not come from the poor. Flowers did not bloom in worthless soil. They were only tolerated in service of the greater whole, the institutions that maintained what music were.

The institutions he had put his entire life into, that he had slaved for - and in return, tolerated him for his usefulness - would not have tolerated Valjean. He did not publish as Madeline for privacy, as Javert had assumed. It was because he knew - as Javert knew - that no one would listen to the compositions of a convict.

(And if Valjean could rise above his actions, if Valjean could produce something beautiful out of worthlessness, then, maybe Javert need not– no, no, too impossible to even think of.)

Staring blankly, his mind unraveling and rewrapping itself around this new truth, Javert stared at the glimmers of light reflecting off of the fountain for a very long time.

 

 

Javert continued to come to their home for Cosette's lessons, though Valjean could tell that he was uncomfortable there. It was not the discomfort of disgust or judgment, however - Valjean was very familiar with /those/ expressions on Javert's face - but instead it was the slightly wary, almost apologetic cast of a man who did not think he was still welcome. It made him look younger, put Valjean in mind of the young man that Javert must have been once.

This time, however, when Javert arrived Cosette was not yet there - a simple mix up, the busses ran late, it happened to them all - so Javert sat awkwardly in the living room to wait. He still refused the offer of tea, though Valjean offered every time.

Javert glanced around the room, taking in details with a careful eye. In another life, he could have been an investigator, cataloging everything around him with accuracy. Valjean tried not to watch him too obviously - the man was lovely, focused and direct - because he was a guest, after all, but then Javert's eyes settled on the silver piccolo that rested on the mantelpiece. Grey eyes narrowed - perhaps wondering how an ex-convict had afforded such a notoriously expensive instrument, regardless of his success in business.

"I did not realize you played," Javert said, gesturing to the instrument. Ah, that question was easier to handle. Valjean couldn't help but smile, carefully picking up the precious instrument.

"I don't, really, I much prefer the piano. This was a gift." Javert tilted his head, politely curious. Valjean nearly laughed, but didn't, caught up in the memory more precious to him than the silver in his hands. "After I was released from prison, I - well, it was difficult to find jobs before my parole was up, and I'd learned to read music in prison, but that was no sort of applicable skill..."

Valjean turned away to put the piccolo back on the mantelpiece, rather than look at Javert's observation. He hadn't even intended to tell Javert this story, but perhaps he did - maybe if Javert knew precisely who he was and what he had done, he would stop looking at him like Madeline.

"I stumbled into a church, and.... Well, I behaved appallingly, in truth, and I." He stared down at the instrument, letting out a breath. "I attempted to steal this piccolo - I knew nothing of the value of it, just recognizing that it was silver and I could sell it."  A noise behind him - here, here would be when Javert stormed out in a rage, when Valjean ruined everything in truth - but Valjean kept talking. "I was caught, of course, but the bishop..." Valjean, even now, could not help but laugh in breathless wonder. "He said told the police that it had been a gift, and convinced them to leave me alone." Another noise from behind him, and now Valjean turned. Javert stared at him with surprise, as if his world had been rearranged - or perhaps that was just Valjean remembering how he had felt then.

"The bishop gave me a place to stay, helped me manage my parole. Eventually, he even let me play with his church's musicians." Valjean smiled, looking down at his hands. Even now, he was amazed that he was ever good for anything but labor. "That was where I learned to conduct, you know. He gave me enough to survive until I could get back on my feet. He saved my life, and gave the opportunity to make something worthwhile of it. I owe him everything."

Javert looked at the piccolo with an expression of intent concentration, familiar from performance. "...You committed a crime against this man." Valjean swallowed, but nodded. It was the truth. "And he forgave you and assisted you, even though your past and your actions gave him no indication that this would be appreciated or worthwhile." Another nod. Javert was puzzling his way to something, but Valjean wasn't sure what, yet. "And due to his assistance, you were able to improve your life and rise above where you had come from and become better."

Valjean inclined his head, though Javert was still staring at the instrument. "I am who I am because of his mercy." Another detail, perhaps more relevant to Javert - "I only began to write, there, at his church." Javert jerked over, staring at him. "He was the one who convinced me that I was able to, that what I made was worth listening to."

Again, that sensation of watching puzzle pieces sliding into place behind Javert's grey eyes. The man stood, and observed the instrument more closely.

"...then I owe this man a debt as well." He finally said, inclining his head. Valjean's breath caught - and then Javert looked at him and yes, that was the barest hint of a smile on that severe face. "I... your music is... Important. If you had been prevented from writing by the… circumstances of your past, then… my life would be… Less than it is."

Valjean smiled, helplessly, as he always did when faced with Javert's regard for him - to the acknowledgement that he had been such a large influence in Javert's life, that he had helped someone and made their world a better place. That was all he had ever wanted.

"... tea?" Valjean offered again, unable to stop smiling.

Javert let out a breath, closed his eyes for a moment, and then said, "Yes, thank you."

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's not romance, perhaps. But it's somewhere romance could come from. 
> 
> I'm not sure I did the idea justice, and there's more I wanted to do with it, but this is the best that I can give it. 
> 
> Thanks for reading <3

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Cover Art] for "Symphony in G Major" by Splintered_Star](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13374822) by [Hamstermoon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hamstermoon/pseuds/Hamstermoon)




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